woman’s sobs. The politruk nodded. “All right, then. Get back to work.”
And they did-all of them, including the babushka who’d just lost her husband. Sometimes life could be very simple.
Some of the soldiers dug alongside them. Others turned the village into a strongpoint. Field fortification was a Russian art. Maskirovka- camouflage-was another. Making buildings into places that were much stronger than they looked combined the two.
They got less done than Ivan wished they would have. German artillery started probing early in the afternoon. Not even the politruk ’s pistol could keep the muzhiks working after that. They ran for the trees, more afraid of the big shells bursting-and with reason. Artillery was the great butcher. Everything else was an afterthought beside it.
The soldiers stolidly labored on. Every so often, they flattened out in the antitank ditches when incoming shells sounded close. After the shelling moved on for a while, they stood up again, brushed themselves off, and went back to digging. A few shells hit in the ditches. A man or two walking around above ground got wounded by fragments.
Scouts fell back toward Old Pigshit or whatever it was, skirmishing as they came. “Stupid Germans aren’t far behind us,” one of them said as he jumped into a trench close to Ivan. Nemtsi, the Russian word for Germans, meant tongue-tied ones or mumblers; it went well with the notion of stupidity. The scout lit a papiros.
“Let me have one of those fuckers, will you?” Ivan said. The scout glanced his way, saw he was a sergeant, and gave him a smoke. Kuchkov had expected no less. After a couple of drags, he asked, “Have they got tanks along?”
“I saw some,” the scout answered. He carried a PPD, too. A Red Army soldier was more inclined to believe in firepower than in God.
“They would, the clapped-out cunts,” Ivan muttered. One of the scout’s eyebrows twitched. All soldiers swore, but Ivan was in a class by himself. He found another question: “Are their peckers up?”
“Why not? They’re advancing,” the scout said bleakly.
Ivan glanced over his shoulder. Maybe a company of KV-1s would clank forward and save the day like the warriors who whipped the Teutonic Knights in Alexander Nevsky. Now there was a flick for you! And maybe green monkeys will fly out of my ass, too, Ivan thought, mocking himself. Life wasn’t like a movie. Tanks didn’t show up from nowhere just because you needed them like anything. And wasn’t that a goddamn shame?
German soldiers appeared in the distance. Field-gray blended in about as well as khaki, but the Nazis’ black helmets stood out on the horizon. The Germans had tanks along: three Czech machines, either captured or newly built in conquered factories. They were better than Panzer Is and IIs, not so good as IIIs: about like any Soviet tanks this side of the KV-1.
Cautiously, the tanks with the white-edged black crosses on them advanced. Foot soldiers loped between them. A Soviet mortar started thumping. Earth fountained up as the bombs hit. The Nazi infantrymen dove for cover. One of them was blasted off his feet. Ivan didn’t think he’d get up again.
A tank crew thought about crossing a ditch, but the obstruction proved too wide and too deep. The machine came straight toward the village, then, as the defenders had planned. A hidden antitank gun opened up on it. The gunners needed several shots before they scored a hit, but the tank stopped and began to burn when they did.
That told the other enemy tanks where the gun was, though. They shelled it into silence, then rolled forward with greater confidence. Another antitank gun knocked one of them out in nothing flat. The last tank scuttled back out of range.
Red Army men with rifles fired at their German counterparts. A machine gun in a tavern opened up on the Fritzes, too. The Germans hit the dirt and started digging foxholes. They were veteran troops. They weren’t about to make things easy for their foes.
“Well, we’ve stopped ’em,” the scout said. Neither he nor Ivan had fired a shot. The Fascists hadn’t drawn close enough to turn their submachine guns deadly.
“For now, yeah. Right here, yeah,” Ivan said. The Red Army could usually stop the Germans right here, and for now. Then, somehow, they’d break through a little later somewhere else, and stopping them right here for now wouldn’t matter any more. You’d have to retreat, or else they’d close the ring behind you and grind you to pieces at their leisure.
Lieutenant Obolensky and the politruk wanted to make the Germans fight a regular battle for Old Pigshit. Unfortunately, the officers in charge of the advancing Nazis had too much sense to bang their heads into a stone wall. They were like water; they slid around obstructions. Before long, their 105s started pounding the Red Army men who held the woods a few kilometers south of the village. Ivan could follow the fighting to the south by ear. The Russians in the woods gave way. The Germans pushed through. That meant Old Pigshit would start flying the swastika pretty soon.
Maybe the place would have held if troops from here had helped the handful of Russians in those woods. Maybe not, but maybe. No one thought to weaken the strongpoint, though. And so, instead of weakening it, the company had to abandon it.
They retreated in good order. They’d be ready to fight again somewhere else before long. The Soviet Union was vast. It could afford to trade space for time. But you couldn’t win a war with endless retreats… could you?
Chapter 12
Something in the mail for you, dear.” Sarah Goldman’s mother handed her an envelope.
“For me?” Sarah couldn’t remember the last time she’d got a letter. It wasn’t as if Saul could write, after all. Not having any idea where her brother was, she had to hope he was all right.
This was no letter. The envelope bore an appallingly official eagle holding a circled swastika in its claws. The eagle’s tiny printed eye caught and held hers, as if commanding her to obedience. One of the things that made the Nazis so scary was the attention they gave even such picayune details: German thoroughness run mad and in power.
“You’d better open it,” Mother said.
“I suppose so,” Sarah agreed insincerely. Attention from the Reich was the last thing she or any Jew wanted. The best you could hope for, most times, was to be overlooked.
But the envelope in her hand wouldn’t go away if she didn’t open it. Whatever the Nazis were telling her they would do, they would do whether she read about it first or not. Better to know ahead of time. Well, it might be, anyhow.
A reluctant fingernail slid under the flap. The envelope opened easily-almost too easily. Even mucilage was of an inferior grade these days. She unfolded the notice inside and read it.
“Nu?” Hanna Goldman asked. “If you open your mouth any wider, a bug will fly in, or maybe a bird.”
Sarah hadn’t noticed her jaw drop. She wasn’t surprised it had, though. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so astonished. She held up the document as if it were a bream she’d just hauled out of a creek. “It’s-” She had to try twice to get the words out: “It’s my permission to get married. They’ve-they’ve approved it.”
She’d shivered in line more than once, waiting to duel with the Nazi bureaucrats at the Munster Rathaus. Back then, her breath had smoked. She’d worn her shabby old coat, which didn’t do nearly enough to hold out winter. Nevertheless, she’d wear it again when frost came back. A Jew’s meager clothing ration wouldn’t stretch to getting her another one.
No need for a coat now. Spring burgeoned outside. Birdsong sweetened the air. Grass was green. Flowers bloomed in perfumed rainbow profusion. Butterflies flitted from one to another to another. Bees buzzed. The sun blazed down from a blue, blue sky dotted with friendly little white clouds.
Mother rushed up and hugged her. “Oh, sweetheart, that’s wonderful! You see? Even they couldn’t say no in the end.” If she didn’t want to name the Nazis, who could blame her?
“Took them long enough to say yes,” Sarah answered tartly.
“They’re… what they are,” her mother said. Sarah couldn’t imagine a worse thing to say about Germany’s masters. Mother went on, “It doesn’t matter any more, though. You have their permission. They can’t take it away again.”
